Hitting The Links: 1/5/25
Planning 50 podcasts for 2025 after a mini-break, a whole ton of great links, some extracurricular reading and Musil's take on the mathematicization of the world, my workout craziness, & more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Going On 50
During the mad dash to close out 2024, I managed to record the first five episodes of this year, along with taking all those Instax pictures for my GUEST/HOST book. Add in the non-interview episodes I posted these past two weeks, and you could almost say I was taking a little break from the podcast.
It’s been kinda interesting to do that. I’ve been reading four extracurricular books at once, with no pod-guest-reading (okay, one’s connected to an upcoming episode, but still), and working on some of the prose pieces for the book. It’s been helpful, I think, to get off the read/record/post cycle for a bit, and to not be going anywhere for a while.
But we do as needs must when the devil drives. While my primary (non-job) focus this year is writing & producing the book, yesterday I got to thinking about how
there are 50 episodes to make in 2025,
five are already recorded,
another two will be year-end non-guest shows, and
I really should get started on figuring out the remaining 43 guests.
I opened up The Great Spreadsheet That Knows All and looked at the Calendar and Prospectives worksheets. I have a few guests tentatively lined up for this spring, and one for an October book release, but that won’t get me to 50! So I began looking over the pile of review copies I’ve received in recent months, my emails from publicists, the upcoming releases on the Edelweiss site, my notes on 2024/25 prospects, and my trade show travel calendar, then started emailing away.
I got my tentatives up to 11 now, with a whole ton more prospects I need to follow up with, to make sure they’re still interested in recording. In theory, I’m just about set for every week through the end of April, but these plans always fall apart; someone has to cancel, someone interesting but time-sensitive crops up, some host gets overwhelmed and just can’t do all the reading and prep. . . .
I know it’s a lot of work, this quixotic project of mine, but it gives my life meaning, brings good conversation into the world, and turns listeners on to books, art, comics, & other cultural stuff they might not otherwise come across, so here’s to excessive planning, and weekends & evenings spent reading, recording, editing, etc., etc., amen.
Which is to say, I’ve still got ~32 guests to line up for 2025, so if you have suggestions or recommendations for people I should record with (and have their contact info), let me know!
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: 2024 Recap • The Guest List • Benjamin Swett • Ken Krimstein • Eddie Campbell • Caitlin McGurk • Frances Jetter
RIP Jimmy Carter . . . RIP Linda Lavin . . . RIP David Lodge . . . RIP Jocelyne Wildenstein . . . RIP Aaron Brown . . . RIP Dada Masilo . . . RIP Lenny Randle . . . RIP Woody Fraser . . . RIP Brenton Wood. . . RIP Agnes Keleti . . . RIP Dick Capri . . . RIP Wayne Osmond . . .
Nice NYT piece about Carter’s writings on aging & death.
Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes wrote about why she quit the Washington Post after they cancelled one of her cartoons. Her editor tried to explain his decision to the NYT, but is unconvincing. Matt Wuerker, who introduced me to Ann, gets in a good dig in the NYT piece.
Ann’s spiked cartoon, showing Bezos, Zuckerberg, Altman, Soon-Shiong & Mickey paying tribute Ann’s newsletter isn’t open to payments yet, but I pledged a year’s subscription; you should, too. (I know, I know: Substack, but still.)
New ICU comic from Jess Ruliffson & Ernesto Barbieri!
Henry Wessells posted his 2024 book roundup, and Aaron Lange wrote up everything he read last year, too.
Bibliophiles oughtta pre-order the new edition of Henry’s Another Green World; it looks like a gorgeous piece.
As for 2025 reads, this pic of Muggsy Bogues & Gheorghe Muresan attending a New Year’s Day Washington Wizards game could be a sign I need to reread Little, Big. (Photo by Josh Robbins.)
I was courtside once during Washington Bullets’ warmups and saw Gheorghe dunk a rebound FLATFOOTED. Speaking of people shorter than Gheorghe, hear me out: an adaptation of Chess Story, with a 7’3” lead.
Have fun storming the castle: NJ Edition!
No, I don’t think my Virtual Memories Show will Pivot To Video, thanks, even if I am better looking than a lot of these hosts.
I don’t think I ever posted this neat piece by Deborah Solomon from 2023 about a Roy Lichtenstein mural that got displaced by, um, a yoga/athleisure ad. That’s what I get for letting the tabs pile up in my browsers.
Caleb Crain wants to see Cross-Fit for Writers. (The fitness pics/videos he posts on IG are better than mine.)
Current/Recent Reading
The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen
“Between clinging and letting go, I feel a terrific struggle. This a fine chance to let go, to ‘win my life by losing it,’ which means not recklessness but acceptance, not passivity but nonattachment.”
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
“All of human tragedy lies in that small example of how those we think about are never the people we think they are.”
The Creative Act: A Way of Being - Rick Rubin
“When you’re working on a project, you may notice apparent coincidences appearing more often than randomness allows — almost as if there is another hand guiding yours in a certain direction. As if there is an inner knowing gently informing your movements. Faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it.” [regarding last Sunday’s newsletter]
I’m keeping up with my daily chapter of The Man Without Qualities. Here’s a nearly page-long bit about the mathematization of the world . . . describing 1913:
“Baron Münchhausen’s post horn was more beautiful than our canned music, the Seven-League Boots more beautiful than a car, Oberon’s kingdom lovelier than a railway tunnel, the magic root of the mandrake better than a telegraphed image, eating of one’s mother’s heart and then understanding birds more beautiful than an ethologic study of a bird’s vocalizing. We have gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one’s big and second toes; there’s work to be done. To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving. It is exactly as though the old, inefficient breed of humanity had fallen asleep on an anthill and found, when the new breed awoke, that the ants had crept into its bloodstream, making it move frantically ever since, unable to shake off that rotten feeling of antlike industry. There is really no need to belabor the point, since it is obvious to most of us these days that mathematics has taken possession, like a demon, of every aspect of our lives. Most of us may not believe in the story of a Devil to whom one can sell one’s soul, but those who must know something about the soul (considering that as clergymen, historians, and artists they draw a good income from it) all testify that the soul has been destroyed by mathematics and that mathematics is the source of an evil intelligence that while making man the lord of the earth has also made him the slave of his machines. The inner drought, the dreadful blend of acuity in matters of detail and indifference toward the whole, man’s monstrous abandonment in a desert of details, his restlessness, malice, unsurpassed callousness, money-grubbing, coldness, and violence, all so characteristic of our times, are by these accounts solely the consequence of damage done to the soul by keen logical thinking!”
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
Because my routine got so off-kilter during the Christmas trip, I decided to do a Mon-Fri weights/yoga cycle, which went fine. I might do weights today for 6 outta 7 days of working out, before going back to my Wed-Sun routine. I continue to look pretty good for a guy who will definitely be in his mid-50s next weekend.
The last couple of days, I’ve also been doing a 15-min. corpse-pose, in hopes the stillness of body will do something to/for my mind. I’m still exploring that, and should probably read up on some imaging & breathing techniques related to it. My thoughts run pretty wild during these, only sometimes becoming more peaceful, generally finding all sorts of new/strange permutations, as well as my bills, my ex, my deadlines, and when I think I’m gonna die. I try to guide away from ego/vanity thinking, but it’s enough that I can just not look at anything for 15 minutes, and trip, like Sam Gross used to say.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! Even though it’ll be New Year’s Day, I think I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, & maybe some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
Time slide, place to hide, nudge reality / Foresight, minds wide, magic imagery, oh-ho,,